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Friday, March 18, 2011

Reading Aloud

I came across a cool tool recently that I wanted to share. It's called Natural Reader. The next time you want to hear your words read aloud by someone else's voice other than your own, try it. It comes in handy. Sometimes hearing your words aloud helps you to understand where a bit of dialogue or narrative in your writing is going right (or wrong).

I read parts of my own drafts aloud all the time, especially dialogue. It always helps to hear it spoken. Read aloud, you can tell if a passage is flowing naturally or whether your dialogue feels real or stilted, for example. It's much more effective than simply reading your words over and over. Merely looking at your words and hearing your words can be completely different.

Next time you're stuck, try it. Plus it's fun and who doesn't need a little fun every now and again?

15 comments:

I do that sometimes. I convert my writing into an LIT file and let Microsoft reader read it out loud to me. You can really find problem areas that way. And with me being the queen of typos (and I can’t seem to catch them all) it comes in very handy.

I love your creed! I think it's brilliant. And I just returned from your great city of Chicago with my husband. We had a fabulous time visiting the Field Museum, the Art Institute, the Science Museum, and the Shedd Aquarium ... next time, I want to go shopping! :)

The current best text to speech software is Text Speaker. It has customizable pronunciation, reads anything on your screen, and it even has talking reminders. The bundled voices are well priced and sound very human. Voices are available in English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and more. Easily converts blogs, email, e-books, and more to MP3 or for listening instantly.